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  1. DEFINITION: emotional illnesses characterized by fear and autonomic nervous system symptoms (palpitations, tachycardia, dizziness, tremor); related to intrapsychic conflict and psychogenic origin where instinctual impulse (related to sexuality, aggression, or dependence) may be in conflict with the ego, superego, or sociocultural environment; related to sudden object loss.
    An anxiety disorder is a mild to moderately severe functional disorder of personality in which repressed inner conflicts between drives and fears are manifested in behavior patterns, including generalized anxiety and phobic, obsessive-compulsive disorders. (Other related disorders are dissociative, conversion, and hypochondriasis.)
  2. GENERAL CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES RELATED TO ANXIETY DISORDERS:
    1. Behavior may be an attempt to "bind" anxiety: to fix it in some particular area (hypochondriasis) or to displace it from the rest of personality (phobic, conversion, and dissociative disorders—amnesia, fugue, obsessive-compulsive disorders).
    2. Purpose of symptoms:
      1. To intensify repression as a defense.
      2. To exhibit some repressed content in symbolic form.
  3. GENERAL ASSESSMENT OF ANXIETY DISORDERS:
    1. Uses behavior to avoid tense situations.
    2. Frightened, suggestible.
    3. Prone to minor physical complaints (e.g., fatigue, headaches, and indigestion) and reluctance to admit recovery from physical illnesses.
    4. Attitude of martyrdom.
    5. Often feels helpless, insecure, inferior, inadequate.
    6. Uses repression, displacement, and symbolism as key defense mechanisms.